"There's not
much to get excited about in this
unimaginative crime story."

Reviewed
by Dennis Schwartz

A
sequel to Angel (1983). The script by Joseph
M. Cala lacks an edge. The direction by Robert
Vincent O'Neil("Angel"/"Paco"/"Wonder
Woman") succeeds mostly in getting the mini skirt
costumes right.

Angel
(Betsy Russell) is the former
Hollywood teen hooker who four years later is a
gun-toting graduating law student. Betsy takes on the
role of Donna Wilkes in the original film. She goes
undercover as a hooker to avenge the death of her
officer detective friend (Joseph M. Cala)
in an undercover sting of hookers. He saved her from
street-life and paid her college tuition.

There's
not much to get excited about in this unimaginative
crime story. It seems to be made as an excuse to give
us a few cheap thrills over nudity and some violence
it softly promotes, and to show us that former western
star Rory Calhoun has been at last located in a pic
and is still alive.

This sequel to ANGEL, the surprise
exploitation hit of 1984, picks up the story of the "high school
honor student by day--Hollywood hooker by night" four years later.
Russell is now a law student about to graduate. She is visited by
her friend detective Lyons, who saved her from the

streets and paid for her education. Lyons
can't stay long, however, because he has to continue an
investigation. In Hollywood four well-dressed assassins burst into
the home of an undercover police detective, who has been posing as
a hooker to get information, and kill her and her parents. Andrews

arrives as the killers are making their
escape, and he, too, is brutally gunned down. When Molly learns of
her benefactor's murder, she immediately returns to the mean
streets of her past to avenge his death. As was the case with
ANGEL, AVENGING ANGEL is amazingly tame stuff, considering the

premise. Aside from some brief glimpses
of nudity--none involving star Russell--the film has little sexual
exploitation, and the violence isn't too bloody. Calhoun, Tyrrell,
and Porter reprise their roles from the original film and are just
as effective here as they were in it.

Molly Stewart (Betsy
Russell) used to be a teenage prostitute known as
Angel, but those days have been put behind her as she is now
a successful law student, though she is still in contact
with the cop who helped her off the streets, Lieutenant
Andrews (Robert
F. Lyons). Unfortunately, their chummy relationship is
about to end, because one night he is rushing to the home of
an undercover policewoman who is preparing to go to work,
knowing that her cover has been blown. Alas, he is too late
and just in time to catch the gangsters as they run out of
her house, having killed her and her parents - and then they
take shots at Andrews...

The original Angel
film had been quite a hit for New World, so it was only
reasonable that a sequel should be ordered up, with the same
man, Robert
Vincent O'Neill, behind the thrills. Or that was the
idea, yet while the first one was no classic it at least
supplied some decent exploitation sequences, but here
Avenging Angel looked more like a feature-length episode of
a television series with a spot of nudity and swearing
added. Donna
Wilkes was absent in this one, and in her place was
eighties pin-up Betsy Russell, who similarly did not take
her clothes off.

Although what clothes she does don are very small, because
she has settled on going undercover to track down Andrews'
murderers, but just because she is dressing like a
prostitute doesn't mean she is turning tricks. In fact,
there's absolutely no reason for posing as she does with the
plot failing to offer any situations where such a guise
might come in handy, but she does get the chance to meet up
with some old friends, that is, the actors willing to return
from the first instalment. So Susan
Tyrrell is back as foul-mouthed Solly, but now she is
looking after a baby (not hers).

That infant will become very important to the finale, but is
this what viewers of Avenging Angel wanted to see, the cast
cooing over babies? Surely they wanted the laughs and sleaze
from before, but nope, they got to sit through such scenes
as Rory
Calhoun's gungslinging Kit Carson liberated from an
old folks' home in a heartwarming fashion, complete with
getaway in a pet cemetery hearse which makes comedy noises.
But what of the villains, surely they're a threatening
bunch? Well, they're a coterie of real estate developers who
want to force Molly's friends from their homes. And they
have guns.

Those gangsters are intent on killing the only witness to
Andrews' death, a supposedly cutesy but in effect highly
resistable chap called Johnny Glitter (Barry
Pearl) who dresses like an extra from The
Wiz and sprinkles, well, glitter around, complete with
the sound of little tinkling bells as he does so. With an
artist's impression of the main bad guy which looks nothing
like him (they don't even get his hair colour right), our
intrepid heroes do find the evildoers, and bump off one of
the head honchos in a hilarious slipping on the wet floor
through a top storey window routine, but as this would be a
mercifully short film if that were the end, there's still
half an hour of plot to get through after that. Avenging
Angel is decidedly mild for a film that showcases the action
it does, but surprisingly it spawned more, even lesser,
sequels. Music by Christopher Young.

Wow, Molly Stewart, AKA former
prostitute 'Angel', sure has changed in the three or four years
since she quit hooking on the Boulevard: now played by Betsy
Russell (replacing winsome Donna Wilkes, star of the first film),
she's gained a couple of cup sizes, developed longer legs, sports
an impressive perm, and is training to be a lawyer, thanks to the
help of her guardian, Hollywood vice cop Lt. Andrews (Robert F.
Lyons).

Molly's new life goes on hold, however, after Andrews is shot dead
by gangsters; teaming up with her old pals, aging cowboy Kit
Carson (Rory Calhoun) and lesbian landlady Solly Mosler (Susan
Tyrell), she once again walks the sleazy sidewalks of Hollywood as
Angel, this time looking for revenge.

For this cheesy sequel to his 1984 exploitation movie Angel,
director Robert Vincent O'Neill throws any sense of realism in the
nearest side-alley dumpster, opting instead for a much campier
approach, his eccentric misfit characters even more exaggerated
than before, his villains ridiculously reprehensible, and the
violence about as cartoonish as it gets.

The film begins promisingly enough, with a car full of gangsters
loading their weapons while heading downtown to 'off' a
big-breasted undercover cop (who is busy taking a shower, natch!),
a blaring Bronski Beat soundtrack giving everything that
delightfully tacky 80s vibe. When the killers make their move,
they blast their victims in the guts, resulting in some messy
squib-work. Unfortunately, after this impressive opening,
everything gets rather too comical for my liking (Rory Calhoun
riding a gurney like a rodeo champ, as Angel and Solly bust him
out of a sanitarium being the most cringe-worthy moment).

Still, even though Avenging Angel lacks the gritty edge that I
generally look for in my vigilante/revenge flicks, and gets
really, really dumb towards the end, the ever present sight of the
delectable Miss Russell in a series of tight-as-you-like outfits,
including a very sexy nurse get-up, makes the film just about
bearable (no nudity from the star, but hey, I've always got her
1983 film Private School for that!).

Storyline

Molly, former baby prostitute "Angel" from Sunset Boulevard, has
managed to leave her street life with help of Lt. Andrews. She
studies law at an university and aims to become attorney. When she
learns that Andrews was shot during a failed observation by brutal
gangsters, she returns downtown to take revenge. She frees Kit
Carson from the old people's home and together with the other old
friends she tracks down the bad guys.

times

It can't be easy to run in an itty- bitty miniskirt and spike
heels, especially when weighted down with junk jewelry. But Betsy
Russell, who plays the title role in ''Avenging Angel,'' can
manage this and talk a little, too. Though the role was
originated, if that is the word, by Donna Wilkes in last year's
''Angel,'' Miss Russell makes about as much sense in it as anyone
would. Angel, you may recall, was the high school honors student
who spent her extracurricular hours as a Hollywood hooker.

Now, supposedly four years later, Miss Russell's Angel (a k a
Molly) is seen studying law. But the slow-motion murder of her
fatherly mentor - a police lieutenant who looks only a few years
her senior - is enough to send her rushing to the closet, ready to
fish the minis out of mothballs. Soon she is back on the streets,
although not exactly back in business. Where Miss Russell is
concerned, ''Avenging Angel'' is on the chaste side, which came as
a big disappointment to most of the patrons of the RKO Warner
Twin. It opened there and at neighborhood theaters yesterday.

The crowd may also have been mildly taken aback by the film's
dopey humor, and by the cigar- chomping lesbian (Susan Tyrrell),
ancient ex-cowboy actor (Rory Calhoun) and Haight-Ashbury holdover
who function as Angel's cute sidekicks. The film, directed by
Robert Vincent O'Neil, devotes more time to the various oddballs
in Angel's immediate circle - which also includes two glamorous
transvestites and a baby named Little Buck - than to the seamy
world of prostitution. Every now and then Angel tries to rescue
one of its victims, like the young girl from Omaha whom Angel
guesses to be not a day over 13. Angel may have a good heart, but
she's a lousy judge of age.

The most that ''Avenging Angel'' has to recommend it are
costumes and sets that spell out everything, sometimes to comic
effect. The wealthy villain, for instance, turns up in a silk
dressing gown and sips from a flowery china teacup. Miss Tyrrell
snorts a lot and really does give the impression of wearing army
boots. And Miss Russell appears in outfits that are the ultimate
in tartiness, though somehow they backfire. Even at her most
street-wise, she manages to suggest a modern-day, modelly version
of Little Bo Peep.

The Cast

AVENGING ANGEL, directed by Robert Vincent O'Neil; written
by Mr. O'Neil and Joseph M. Cala; director of photography,
Peter Lyons Collister; music by Chris Young; produced by Sandy
Howard/Keith Rubinstein; released by New World Pictures. At
Warner Twin, Broadway and 47th Street; Olympia, Broadway and 107th
Street and other theaters. Running time: 92 minutes. This film is
rated R. WITH: Betsy Russell, Rory Calhoun, Robert F. Lyons,
Ossie Davis, Susan Tyrrell